As you’ve no doubt heard, the official ROBLOX Winter Games have begun. This is a first for ROBLOX in many regards — this marks the first official demo of our new Game Universe technology, and is the first site event to be created almost entirely by our community. 10 ROBLOX developers brought you the Winter Games this year, and they’re names you may have heard before: Merely, Simoon68, Masterbeyblade21, Iciness, Godsend, Asleum, asimo3089, badcc, radiogamer, and alexrocks911. Each poured significant effort into their Winter Games contribution, so we decided to give them an opportunity to discuss their projects and challenges they encountered on the way to completion.

Building the lodge

asimo3089 is a prolific builder with a very distinct visual style — one that we felt would be perfect for a secluded ski lodge. The lodge is the starting point to the Winter Games and comprises of a large cabin where you and up to 49 others can hang out, chat, sip hot chocolate, or (in cases I saw earlier in the day) tell ghost stories around the fire. Behind it is the ski-lift, with gondolas that transport you to the different events. We talked with asimo3089 about his creation:

I created the lodge and the hub — the biggest challenge was coming up with a great layout in just four weeks. ChiefJustus mentioned in his e-mail that he wanted a fire pit, ski-lift and a lodge, and I was able to finish it just a few days in advance. I really wanted to incorporate tiny things for players to find and interact with — like if you walk up to the piano at the main entrance it will trigger a tune. There’s also a secret room somewhere in the lodge that you’ve got to do some exploring to find.

I can’t thank user badcc enough — he was there from the very first day and helped me with anything involving scripting. He scripted the entire ski-lift system and helped me out with a ton of small things. He deserves the same amount of credit that I’ve been getting for putting this place together.

Snowball Fight

CEO and Commissioner of the ROBLOX Bay Police Department, alexrocks911 had actually started developing this game before we requested user-submitted games from top developers! He explains the story behind Snowball Fight:

I think the biggest challenge in creating Snowball Fight was determining how it would work. Originally I was going to make a Capture the Flag snowball fight — I wound up making it a team-type snowball fight with a secret gift box hidden somewhere in the level. Did you find it yet?

I made the level with a castle for each team on the map. It was a challenge deciding on points per KOs and WOs, and I settled on five in-game points per KO. You need to earn 35 points in order to earn this prize and badge. I started development by deciding on the right level size and making walls so players wouldn’t accidently fall off the map. Then I made the snowball-drop script, which I’m sure you’ve noticed if you’ve played the game. Then I created the castles and made the teams, but still felt like something was missing. So I added high-rise points for each team, a GUI that pops up when you earn 35 points, and had TechTeam911 fix my point leaderboard.

I was inspired by other user-created snowball fight games, particularly Crazyman32’s Snowball Mania. I actually made Snowball Fight before the admins were collecting event entries. I originally planned on doing Ice Hockey as a second entry but I just ran out of time.